Image Credit: Brazil’s Independent Games Festival
On the first floor of Brazil’s Independent Games Festival, around 20,000 attendees played indie titles from all over the world on rows of TVs and in virtual reality booths. Some folks lined up against the wall, waiting to get into the latest panel about composing music or narrative design.
Others huddled around the robot racing course in the back.But in the basement, it was all business.
“Video games are a global business. You develop for the world. We realized that even with a small games scene at the time, most companies were developing their games in English,” said Eliana Russi, the executive director of BIG, in an interview with GamesBeat. “They were already considering self-publishing internationally. We started to invite buyers, investors, publishers, mentors to come to Brazil and meet with our developers.”
Russi and her team created BIG not just as a showcase for Brazilian and Latin American developers or a celebration of independent games. Rather, they envisioned it to be an interdisciplinary vehicle to cross the lines of education, government, and business development. Throughout the day, BIG Impact and BIG Careers panels discussed topics like job opportunities, public policy, and urban development through games. In the business lounge, you saw suits and ties, 1-on-1 meetings, and mixers as developers, publishers, investors, and distributors mingled. Russi said that around 250 companies took part in the meetings, 84 of which were international.
“We have now 1,500 connections set up and being done through the 1-on-1: 1,500 meetings happening in three days, 500 per day,” said Russi.
“Last year we had, at the event, $2.5 million in contracts signed, and a forecast for the next 12 months…The post Brazil’s Independent Games Festival goes beyond games to business appeared first on FeedBox.